Kenyan coffee farmers have for generations watched sweat and toil earn foreign markets high returns while they gain little from it back home. Now the government has promised to turn the tide of all this and it’s employing technology as the tool with which to do it.
In a first, the government will launch Kenya’s first ever online market for selling farm produce starting with coffee in an effort to bring to an end the highly profitable cartels and middlemen who have long been accused of defrauding farmers.
Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe, who spoke to the press on Wednesday alongside his Cooperatives counterpart Wycliffe Oparanya, said the electronic auction system will connect farmers to local and international buyers directly, bringing much-needed transparency to a trade tainted by corruption and price fixing.
“Markets can’t be repeated every year and expect a different result it’s madness,” Kagwe said, echoing frustration in the hearts of numerous farmers who have seen their incomes fall even as Kenya basks in its global good name for coffee quality.”.
“We’ve agreed that the auction must go online. This will open it up to international buyers who want to deal directly with producers, not brokers. Cartels will no longer hold our farmers hostage,” he added.
The electronic platform will be launched through the Nairobi Coffee Exchange and has the potential to change the manner in which Kenya’s coffee is sold and marketed. Through online real-time bidding, farmers will receive greater price transparency and, more significantly, greater control.
For farmers like Kirinyaga’s Mary Nduta, the prospect of an open marketplace offers hope.
We produce some of the finest coffee in the world, but what do we have to show for it?” she asks. “By the time the brokers take their share, we’re left with leftovers. If this online auction succeeds, maybe we’ll at last begin to get what we’re owed.”
Although it has deep roots and fertile land, Kenya’s coffee industry has been on a freefall for decades. The nation earned Ksh40 billion in coffee exports last year less than half the money it was making in the 1980s, when revenues topped Ksh100 billion each year.
The sharp drop is blamed by Kagwe on low yields, poor management, and widespread exploitation.
To battle this, the government is setting aside an ambitious scheme to give it a new life which includes:
Scaling up coffee production to new regions,
Duplicating productivity per tree from 3 kilos to 30,
Sitting agricultural extension officers to the field to help farmers,
Upgrading more than 1,100 cooperative processing factories in 22 counties.
Growing More, Earning More
Under CS Oparanya’s vision, the goal is to raise Kenya’s coffee production from its present 50,000 metric tonnes to 150,000 within a three-year period.
The reforms must place the farmer at the heart of every choice,” he said. “Otherwise, we risk not learning from history. The coffee production must once more be a source of income for our people.”.
Production of seedlings is already being increased by institutions like the New Kenya Planters Cooperative Union (New KPCU) to meet greater demand, as more farmers in a move prompted by the possibility of better prices go back into their fields.
On the international front, Kagwe declared that Kenya would take its coffee reform plan global. The nation will next week present proposals in Rome at the World Food Forum advocating for African coffee markets to operate independently something he asserts will make farmers on the continent receive more and compete favorably on the international stage.
“Why should African coffee make good money abroad and our farmers poor?” Kagwe asked. “It’s time we righted the system not just for Kenya, but for the whole of Africa.”
With the online platform about to roll out, the hope for now lies in breaking the cycle of exploitation and at last giving farmers a stake in the value they create.
For at the heart of every steaming cup of Kenyan coffee that is drunk in New York, Berlin, or Tokyo is the sweat and soil of a small farmer who, for too long, has earned far too little.
